


the hupperdook hustle

by unicyclehippo



Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [33]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25200367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: prompt: dancing and piningor,Ain't no party like a Hupperdook party because a Hupperdook party don't stop -  until the appointed hour at which point it immediately stops because these gnomes truly take their "work hard, party hard" motto very seriously and they need minimum eight hours of sleep to go to work refreshed. And in which Beau is gay and Jester is very pretty.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824289
Comments: 3
Kudos: 81





	the hupperdook hustle

It’s been a long time since they were in Hupperdook and beyond the obvious signs of warfare—walls in rubble, scorch and blast marks, more craters less well-contained that char and blacken the fields beyond the city—it is much as it was before. The parties are perhaps a little less well attended but not to any really noticeable degree.

‘Beau! Beau!’ Jester pushes through the crowd, face alight with a wide grin. It isn’t what Beau had expected to see from her—after all, Jester had been escorting Kiri home, saying yet another goodbye to the girl (for now) and the last time they’d done that it had been all tears—but when she finally pushes through the last gnomes, Jester is holding up a large waxed-paper package tied with neat twine that rattles when she shakes it. ‘I got more!’ she crows, dances an impromptu happy jig. ‘More of your fire crackers!’ she explains when Beau just…stares.

‘You’re joking!’ The words are too loud and earn a few interested looks. Beau ducks her head – which does shit all with her standing head and shoulders above most of the crowd – and swipes loose hair back from her face. It is sticking against her forehead and neck, slick with sweat from dancing and the permanent heat of the crowd and the inn. ‘You’re joking!’

‘No!’

‘Then you’re brilliant!’ Beau decides, and Jester’s grin widens further at that. Beau takes the package from her, feels the heft of it. It feels weird, wrong, to take the package and leave Jester, so when she sees Caleb stand from their table, she waves him down, catches his eye before he can go too far.

‘Beau. Jester, hallo.’

‘Hallo, Cay-leb.’

‘Hey, dude. You’re headed upstairs? Put this in my bag, yeah? Actually, I don’t want you going through my shit,’

‘I would not,’

‘Just put it in with all your crap and I’ll get it in the morning.’

Caleb rolls his eyes and takes the package. Feels the rattle. Lifts it to his nose and sniffs.

‘Weird, Cay-leb.’

‘Charcoal. Sulphur.’ He holds the package an arms-length out from his torso and in a low voice, asks, ‘Beauregard, _was ist das?_ ’

‘It’s some of those weird bricks we found in the mineshaft. I thought I heard it hissing, but that might’ve just been a mistake, hearing weird sounds in a party and all –‘

‘She’s _joking_ ,’ Jester hurries to assure him, but she can’t stop from laughing too. ‘It’s more of the fire-crackers.’

Colour returns to the whey-faced Caleb as he sucks in a breath. ‘Do not – _frighten_ me like that, Beau,’

She laughs, slaps him on the shoulder. ‘You should’ve seen your face, man.’

He shakes his head. Tucks the package – after another moment of distrust – under his arm. He looks to Beau and then to Jester, raises a brow. ‘It is late, you are not coming up?’

‘In a bit. Just—a few more dances. Just a few,’ she promises, nodding to him that they both remember the work to come the following day, and Caleb shrugs. Disappears into the stairwell to the second floor.

Beau lets herself get dragged back into the push and pull of the dancing masses with Jester. None of them are as drunk as they had been that first time in Hupperdook—none of them want to get got, even if they caught the thieves that time, and they’d just been kids. But it also means that Beau has very little excuse for the way her stomach swoops and turns over when she turns back to Jester and holds out her hand. _Offers_ her hand.

‘D-dance?’ She stutters over the word, cheeks burning with more than just the heat from the fires on either side of the drinking hall.

‘What?’ Jester asks. She points to her ears, shakes her head. ‘I can’t – ‘

‘Oh, you can’t – it’s loud,’ Beau agrees, nods a few times fast. ‘Do you-’

‘Sorry,’

‘No, no, you’re good!’ Beau half-yells, and the words are very loud all of a sudden in the lull, the musicians taking a breather switching from one song to the next. There’s a wave of laughter—good-natured, all of it—from the crowd and from Jester, who giggles and covers her mouth. Her eyes gleam overtop her hand, amused. Beau rolls her eyes. She can’t embarrass herself much more than that so she holds her hand out again, more purposefully. ‘Do you – want to dance?’ she asks Jester, definitely loud enough this time.

Her stomach, the traitor, still twists up in knots.

It’s worth it, though, to see Jester light up. Her smile beams into Beau bright enough to blind. It’s _so_ fucking worth it to feel Jester set her hand into Beau’s. Somehow, along all of their travels, Jester has managed to keep her hands largely soft, largely unscarred; it makes Beau shiver to feel her callouses graze against Jester’s skin. Hopes that, if Jester feels it too, that she doesn’t mind too much.

As the song kicks up, strings leading the horns and percussion into a jaunty, rollicking tune, Jester pulls her in. Slots herself against Beau in the lead position. It isn’t a surprise, and it is at the same time, and Beau just has to laugh. Throws her head back as it bubbles up. Jester does too. Laugh, that is. Beau can feel it where they are pressed together, the laughter like a rumbling purr in Jester’s chest, rumbling all the way up to her throat, all the way out to her hands that shift in their grip, tighter, eager. She can feel it in the shift of Jester’s soft belly where it presses against Beau’s hip.

And then they are dancing.

It takes a few attempts to copy the moves of the couples around them, but Beau is surprised by how easy it is to move with Jester. They don’t get all the steps, not even close, but Jester is just…easy to dance with. She dances with all the exuberance she does everything else with—twirling and stepping and kicking and making faces that have Beau in stitches, and standing up on her tip-toes so that Beau can duck under her arm, twirling around and around until she’s dizzy with it all. She presses Beau to spin her out and back in after seeing someone else do it across the room. Beau obliges. Her heart gives an ungainly thud in her chest when she has Jester in the cradle of her arms, another when Jester spins all the way out and away from her, dark eyes bright with joy and candlelight, cheeks flushed. Their hands slide away from one another until they’re barely touching, just fingertips if that; and then Beau feels as though she only twitches her fingers, only _thinks_ about it, beckoning, and Jester is twirling back into her arms.


End file.
